With days growing hotter, air conditioning is playing an ever-growing role in how people cope with the heat. In EU households, energy consumption for cooling has steadily increased, reaching 80.4 thousand terajoules (TJ) in 2024.
According to the EU’s statistics agency, Eurostat, EU households used 40.5 thousand TJ for space cooling in 2018, meaning that by 2024, total final energy consumption doubled. Between 2018 and 2024, consumption increased every year, except for 2023 (-1.9%) and 2020 (-2.5%) which registered decreases compared with the previous years.
Among EU countries, Italy, Spain and Greece registered the highest total energy use for space cooling, with 26.3 thousand TJ, 14.3 thousand TJ and 11.9 thousand TJ, respectively.
However, Cyprus and Malta have by far the highest shares of energy used for space cooling in final household consumption, at 16.0% and 15.0%. In Greece, 7.4% of household energy use was for cooling, while in Spain and Italy, the shares were lower at 2.5% and 2.3%.
